Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#291

Post by omarhaneef » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 1:40 PM UTC

I wish I could reproduce the passages from memory but as I recall, Tolkien as narrator in LOTR abhorred the cutting down of trees and the development that went on. His protagonists are all nature lovers in the original form, some very direct ones (walking trees, eagles etc) and the antagonists all want to cut down trees and build towns over them and so forth.

It is likely that the witch king and the Nazgul are trying to get an industrial revolution going and the heroes keep cutting interrupting their attempts each 11k years or so.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#292

Post by mrcheesebreeze » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

here's a funny idea: no islamic golden age which meant no european enlightenment.

Yeah middle earth's history is completely different, there is no europe or arabia.

Despite this it would be funny that the easterling's lack of mathmatical progress would lead to the free men not advancing like they hypothetically could have.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#293

Post by p_l » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 1:45 PM UTC

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #30

r_harriso wrote: post #11

The reason that Tolkien didn’t write an industrial revolution into the history of middle earth is that he hated industry. Hated how it destroyed bucolic village life. Having this take on LoTR is pointless. Just an annoying waste of time.

The point of the article is to talk about the industrial revolution. It is no great feat of intelligence to figure out the reason something is not in a book is because the author didn't want it there. I personally thought these thoughts were a bit scattered but ultimately somewhat interesting. And the thought of Gandalf waving a .44 around is funny.

Especially when you consider that Gandalf is essentially "LARPing" a human - and has access to weapons of mass destruction if he threw off his limits.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#294

Post by mannykannot » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 1:46 PM UTC

Clearly, Middle Earth is a Bostromesque simulation in which technological thoughts are largely suppressed - and we know who coded it.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#295

Post by Izkata » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 1:50 PM UTC

claudiawerner wrote: post #174

comex wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Harry Potter is an obvious exception where it's the other way around.) It is? Harry spent a lot of time contending with bureaucracy, whether in the form of overbearing schoolteachers or a corrupt Ministry of Magic. One of the series’ major villains, Dolores Umbridge, is sort of a personification of bureaucracy.

Harry's single ambition through the books is becoming a member of the Wizarding police/SWAT team (Aurors), totally integrated into the system. The only things he had any personal problem with was occasionally who's in charge. In fact, he stays (almost) moot through the entire series of books on questions such as the fact of elves being literal slaves, where people who speak out (e.g. Hermione) are portrayed as shrill…

On that one Harry takes a more individualistic approach: You can't save those who don't want to be saved. Most house elves are happy where they are and fear being freed, but Harry had no problem helping Dobby, who obviously wanted out.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#296

Post by klik99 » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 1:52 PM UTC

timoth3y wrote: post #190

The article presents an engineering answer to s sociological question. The reason technology did not advance in Middle Earth is because innovation was not rewarded. Innovation and experimentation were punished. Mine a little too deeply? You awaken a balrog that kills you an everyone you have ever known. Want to expand into that verdant area across the river? You didn't expect giant spiders, did you? Build a disruptiv…

The article is fun, but I have my own theory - necessity is the mother of invention. In a magic world, where's the necessity?

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#297

Post by CrazyStat » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 1:52 PM UTC

peace4all wrote: post #246

Angostura wrote: post #241

I highly recommend "The Last Ring Bearer" for people who like to have a bit of fun with Tokien. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer Eskov's version of the story describes Mordor as a peaceful constitutional monarchy on the verge of an industrial revolution, that poses a threat to the war-mongering and imperialistic faction represented by Gandalf (whose attitude has been described by Saruman as "crafting…

I should add that Kirill Yeskov is a paleontologist and science popularizer. Here's his own explanation how he wrote "The Last Ringbearer": one of the reasons he mentions is that Middle Earth was impossible geologically: https://fan-lib-ru.translate.goog/e/eskov/text_0150.shtml?_x... In which he also mentions another famous book: "It would hardly occur to anyone to seriously analyze the functioning of the ecosystem o…

>Being a paleoantologist, he made a question to Tolkien's book: why the Middle Earth had such strange land mass distribution, which is geologically impossible. And this started the "Last Ringbearer" book.

Unfortunately he missed the answer: at the time Tolkien was writing, plate tectonics was still considered an absurd hypothesis, the subject of mockery by "serious" geologists. As such the understanding of "geologically impossible" at that time was rather different than when Yeskov was writing a few decades later.

It was not until the 1950s that widespread sea floor mapping and research, made possible by the now-unnecessarily-large-and-mostly-idle US Navy, provided conclusive evidence that forced the geology establishment to accept plate tectonics.

It's easy to forget how recently we stopped being totally wrong about things like that.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#298

Post by acegopher » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 1:53 PM UTC

peace4all wrote: post #246

Angostura wrote: post #241

I highly recommend "The Last Ring Bearer" for people who like to have a bit of fun with Tokien. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer Eskov's version of the story describes Mordor as a peaceful constitutional monarchy on the verge of an industrial revolution, that poses a threat to the war-mongering and imperialistic faction represented by Gandalf (whose attitude has been described by Saruman as "crafting…

I should add that Kirill Yeskov is a paleontologist and science popularizer. Here's his own explanation how he wrote "The Last Ringbearer": one of the reasons he mentions is that Middle Earth was impossible geologically: https://fan-lib-ru.translate.goog/e/eskov/text_0150.shtml?_x... In which he also mentions another famous book: "It would hardly occur to anyone to seriously analyze the functioning of the ecosystem o…

Hey, just a note that the YouTube links are the same, which I don't think you intended.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#299

Post by seanmcdirmid » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 1:57 PM UTC

klik99 wrote: post #296

timoth3y wrote: post #190

The article presents an engineering answer to s sociological question. The reason technology did not advance in Middle Earth is because innovation was not rewarded. Innovation and experimentation were punished. Mine a little too deeply? You awaken a balrog that kills you an everyone you have ever known. Want to expand into that verdant area across the river? You didn't expect giant spiders, did you? Build a disruptiv…

The article is fun, but I have my own theory - necessity is the mother of invention. In a magic world, where's the necessity?

Magic in Tolkien is rare and subtle. It isn’t in common use at all, and isn’t applied to solve many problems.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#300

Post by bombcar » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 1:58 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #236

gostsamo wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Middle Earth has no contraception (Tolkien is catholic) and the only way to stop multiplying is to stop doing... math. LOTR is famous for the women missing from social life, so there is no reason that such measures have been taken. So, you are expected to have high birthrate until you occupy all the good lands and then some. After that you either rediscover Malthus or you start innovating to get more out of what you…

> LOTR is famous for the women missing from social life, so there is no reason that such measures have been taken. Maybe the women are missing from not just from social life, but from the world. Not just the entwives[0] and the rarely seen dwarven women, but even human women are surprisingly rare. How many of all those many men making an appearance were married? Only hobbits seem to have actual families, but still no…

Sam, post war, has a large family, and some of the other hobbits do as well (Farmer Cotton, for example).

But it also seems that Frodo and Bilbo were NOT mentioned as being "strange" or anything, so it's not certain that everyone would marry and have a family of any size.